Deliberate Practice Applied to Voir Dire

Daniel Ambrose

TLU New York City | September 20th - 23rd

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To master voir dire does not take 10,000 hours of practice, but it does require making a commitment to training and deliberate practice.

Nobody becomes a scratch golfer by just watching Tiger Woods, or reading a book by Jack Nicholas, watching golf on tv, or just playing a lot of golf and trying really hard. If you want to become great at golf you would hire a coach, take lessons where you are shown the correct way to hold and swing a club, be recorded swinging, corrected, and try again. Then you would go to the range and practice daily. As you got better you would test your skills on the course, eventually entering tournaments. And of course, continue with your lessons and your DELIBERATE PRACTICE.

The elements of Deliberate Practice are:

1. Having a correct Mental Representation, a mental structure that corresponds to an object, an idea, a collection of information, or a skill.
2. Having a coach who designs you a training program and shows you correct form.
3. Engage in daily solitary practice to perfect the skill
4. Practice the skill in a realistic setting

We all know that the key to a great voir dire is connecting with the jury. Connection is a complex skill that must be divided into its micro-skills which are:

1. Eye contact
2. Voice control
3. Facial expression/state control
4. Hand/body movement
5. Glance control
6. Creating space
7. Word selection
8. Listening

I will demonstrate and explain various patterns of voir dire and how you can start to learn these skills.